Bottas: Lighter cars go faster

9 February 2013

New Williams' recruit Valtteri Bottas insists that there was a simple explanation for the Grove team not featuring higher up the timesheets at this week's Jerez test, insisting that the work carried out was building towards the introduction of the new FW35 in Barcelona.

Williams was the only team to run a 2012-spec machine in southern Spain, but incorporated parts and ideas that will transfer to the new car following its 19 February unveiling at the Circuit de Catalunya. Bottas, meanwhile, made his debut as a full member of the race team, running the final two days of the test after taking over from Pastor Maldonado.

The pair wound up only 17th and 19th on the combined timesheets, taking into account every driver's best lap across the four days, but Bottas is adamant that there is little that can be read into the charts given that each team was running to its own particular programme.

"There's a simple reason [why we weren't further up the order],” he told journalists, “Physics still exists [and], if you have lighter car with less fuel, it goes a bit quicker!"

Despite the joking, the Finn – who enjoyed 15 outings with Williams during free practice at races last season – insisted that the whole four days had been useful in determining which direction to take with development parts. A revised nose design and Coanda exhaust were both obvious on the interim machine, and Bottas confirmed that the better ideas would be taken forward and appear on the FW35 from the next test.

"We've got some positive results and the whole test basically was really positive for us," the 23-year old reported, “We got a big amount of data to analyse, so the guys will be working really hard now to find which are the best bits to put [forward] for the new car.

"Barcelona test one will be really important for us, [with the] new car, so there's a lot to go through. But this test has still been really valuable to understand the tyres, even if the conditions were maybe not ideal. We managed to test a lot of new parts in the old car here and we got some really good data. We have quite got quite a good understanding now which direction to push for."